A Word on Water

This week was pretty basic in my personal life, but a few things going on made me want to write about the ocean.

I didn't include "The Beach" in last week's list of "5 Things I Missed About Guam," only because I'd been in New Zealand, which has its fair share of beautiful bluffs and shores. All the same, I did miss Guam's beaches, and I was lucky to visit two new ones this week. It started on Monday with a trip to Tanguisson Beach. After a month in the not-so-tropical waters on New Zealand, it was nice to enjoy the warm water without having to piss myself.

On Saturday I visited Rotidian, which is now officially my favorite beach on Guam. Unfortunately, I forgot my book, so I was forced to just lounge, drink Coronas, go for a run, and enjoy the surf. Short of being in New Orleans circa August 2005, there is no better way to appreciate the power of water than to step into the ocean. This is especially true when there's a strong undertow or current, like there was at Rotidian that day. If I picked the right spot, I could actually swim in place, using the current as an aquatic treadmill. But that was a little much after a beer and a run, so I went retro and decided to play one of my all-time favorite games from childhood... Jell-O.

Many of you have played this game as kid on a long car trip—it's simple. You just let your body go limp, and "accidentally" smash the brother/sister/cousin sitting next to you every time the car takes a turn. Well, when we were little, my brothers and I used to play a beach version of this game in the summer. Basically, you lie down on the edge of the ocean, where there's almost enough water to cover your body, then you go limp and let nature do its thing. It's not as violent as the road-trip version of the game, but there is something sublime about just "going with the flow." You may end up a hundred yards down the beach; or, you may end up getting sucked in and body-slammed into a mass of coral.

That brings me to the not-so-fun side of water. My prayers go out to the people of Western Europe that got slammed this week in the storms and flooding. My thoughts are also with the people of Chile as they try to put their lives and country back together. I was in Hawaii in 2004 when the Indian Ocean Tsunami wrecked Indonesia. This time, I found myself in the middle of a Pacific region-wide tsunami warning, resulting from the 8.8 earthquake in South America. I fell asleep on Saturday night to the sounds of CNN predicting that a wave would probably hit Guam around 1pm the next day. The scariest part was the wait, and not knowing what the next day would bring. I had not had that exact feeling since I fell asleep on Sunday October 20, 1991. Thankfully, the tsunami warning was cancelled, and the only fallout for me was a nixed boat trip to go check out the local dolphins.

A big part of the reason why my mind has been on the ocean is that I'm thirty pages shy of finishing Moby Dick. I felt a sad irony when I read about Tilikum, the orca, making the third human kill of his career in captivity. There's been a strong outcry from the animal rights community, and a lot of defensive responses from Sea World and the rest of the animal entertainment industry. Ultimately, reading Herman Melville's classic makes me appreciate how ridiculous it is to argue that it makes sense to capture a 12,000 pound whale and keep him in a pool. All that being said, rest in peace to Dawn Brancheau.

So those are my thoughts on water, the power of the ocean, and how untamable it really is. Signing off until next week.

Pura Vida,

Drew